


Ameliorate

by orphan_account



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Depression, F/M, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Reclaiming sexuality, Trauma, no graphic depiction of rape, reclaiming autonomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:38:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate reclaims parts of herself after her rape. Obvious trigger warnings for subject matter, but (implied) sex in the fic itself is fully consensual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ameliorate

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking the other day about the lack of fics regarding Kate's trauma and the aftermath of that, and how it's canonically brushed-over. This is my sorry attempt at remedying that, so be warned that this is pretty dark and heed the trigger warnings for rape, trauma, and whathaveyou. I've never experienced this myself, either, so if there's anything horribly off or something that offends I deeply apologize; also my current comp is old as shit, meaning I don't have Word, so any errors are due to my lack of a spellcheck program; feel free to notify me and I'll fix anything.

 

Kate bit down the bile in her throat. It was cliche, probably, to wake up in a cold sweat with breath heavy, like it was trying to escape her very body; clawing desperately from her chest. The darkness around her was palpable, smothering. A strangled cry emerged from her throat, choked and sobbing. "Lights!"

The body, warm and solid, stirred from sleep next to her, raising partially as if to join her in a sitting position. "Kate?" he asked, still groggy.

The lights had turned on. Noh-Varr, the person who had, a moment ago, been sleeping next to Kate, raised himself fully into a sitting position, eyes wide now that he took in her ragged breathing, wide eyes, trembling with hands fisting the sheets.

"S'okay," she grit her teeth, angry at something that Noh-Varr knew wasn't him. "I'm _okay_ ," she said, and there was an undercurrent of anger to her voice still, as if she were trying to convince herself more than him. He wasn't sure if he should touch her or not, seeing as he didn't know the cause of the outburst, but he settled for a placating hand on her shoulder. "Do you want to go home?" he asked, as much gentleness in his voice as he could possibly inject.

Kate shuddered at the touch at first, before melting into it. "No."

She fought this war with herself, and she hated it; hated the fact that memory had its talons so deep in her flesh, that experience has a slimy tentacle hold on her, corrupting everything and everyone.

Sometimes it was okay- _most nights_ \- most nights, it was fine. But she was so goddamn _angry_.

Mostly at herself. She knew it was stupid, it wasn't her fault- this she knew- but she hated that something could affect her so much.

Her. The leader. A hero. Fucking Hawkeye.

She hadn't told anyone about the Incident- well, her therapist, and Jessica Jones, and Clint. Her therapist had encouraged her to talk about it, and she would've told Clint, but he kinda figured it out himself. He knew her better than anyone, even her therapist. It was a Hawkeye thing, maybe.

{He'd come to her apartment with Starbucks, and he didn't talk, but he signed, and for some reason it was always easier for her to talk about herself when she didn't have to say it out loud. Her fingers flew, telling a grisly tale without words, confirming Clint's suspicions, recounting events that she had put into a weird separate corner of her mind. They'd happened to That Kate. Her therapist called this depersonalization. Maybe it was, a little.}

He'd had a blank face, but she could see his emotions warring in his eyes. They were too easy to read, to eachother, anyway.

His voice had been a croak, cracking with anger and empoathy and fire and ice. "Katie-Kate. I'll kill the bastard." he shook his head, eyes closed. " _But_. I know you wouldn't want that." She laughed, and it was real, no bravado in her tone as she replied.

"If he dies, it's by me." She looks out the window. If. _If_. She should want him dead. Mostly, though, she just wants to forget.

　--------------------------------

　

Kate knew what people would say. That she deserved it, that she had it coming. Or they'd apologize, and that was the worst of all, the mere notion of such a hollow sympathy.

She wrote it down, started a diary. Her therapist had said she should.

She burned it halfway through the first page.

　--------------------------------

Kate wasn't exactly a virgin pure, or anything. She'd be lying if she said she didn't, sometimes, think maybe she did have it coming, maybe it was her fault, maybe, maybe, maybe. She hated the thoughts more than anything.

　-------------------------------------

In a dream, her father called her a whore. She woke up alone. God, the sheets were so cold.

　-----------------------------------

She was pretty unchaste, had no problem acknowledging that. Still, she saw nothing wrong with her catalog of conquests.

But god, the tendrils of memory, reaching, corrupting, claiming and deprecating everything that she once loved, including sex.

The sheets were cold. She made a choice to cut the tendrils from her body; purge them from her mind; burn them until there was nothing left of the memory but a bitter aftertaste of ash.

Clint always said she was headstrong, she thought, and smiled.

　-------------------------------------

She wanted to take back the act that was tainted by mind and memory, and thought of someone.

　

She'd slept with Eli and Tommy, a few others she didn't care enough about, and they came to mind just as quickly as she pushed the thought away. There was still too much raw emotion there, so much unsaid and unspoken and unfelt.

But Noh-Varr.

She trusted him, and maybe that was foolish, but she had always been quite headstrong. This they shared.

　---------------------------------------

　

He didn't have to know. It was better that way.

Maybe it was because of his alien, no-nonsense nature, or the not-quite-comprhension of human social patterns still, or maybe he was just better at reading her than she gave him credit for. He let her on his ship.

He played music- jazz, the time period of which she wasn't sure- and he let her lead, which wasn't all that unusual, given their past experiences.

　--------------------------------------

His hands were solid, and they fell on her hips with the reassurance of a gun or a belt of arrows or some kind of safety net.

She caught his bottom lip with her teeth, making a noise low in her throat.

Naked, clothes removed and thrown to the other side of the room. She threw them herself, with purpose, and Noh-Varr's too, for good measure.

　---------------------------------------

The lights were left on. She wanted to see every inch of Noh-Varr, but mostly she wanted him to see her.

She was beautiful, she knew.

Moments later, she reclaimed the feeling of something hard and slick between her thighs, and she felt whole; a piece of a puzzle too complex to yet solve being given back to her.

She whispered and screamed and made noise because she wanted to.

When she repeated mine, mine, mine like a prayer, she wasn't sure if she was talking baout Noh-Varr at all.

 _Hers_ ; herself; _hers_ ; her choice.

She fell asleep sated, happy, a tune of power ringing in her ears.

　---------------------------------------

　

The nightmare came. Kate wanted to compare it to a beast that attacked her, but the analogy only brought thoughts of her own face on a monstrous body, tearing at her mind with claws and wings and words.

"Do you want to go home?" the alien beside her asked. She steadied herself, eased her brething. She was't afraid of the nightmares.

She had been, at first, like a child afraid of the monsters under the bed. {Why did she have less control of the monsters in her own head?}

Now, they angered her. Vow as she might to burn the thoughts, they seemed immune to flame. It was interrupting her sleep, she mused, almost separate from herself. That Kate. The Kate with the nightmares. This Kate. The sleepy Kate.

That Kate, the Kate that had been raped.

She didn't want to shy away from the word anymore. She didn't want to lie to herself anymore. God, she was tired.

　

"No." She paused, smiling.

"Noh-Varr, please take me into space." The words came out as a breathless laugh as she laid back down, letting her head hit the pillow, black hair making a halo, or perhaps devil horns around her face.

Noh-Varr got up to comply with her request. Yes, she needed to give the alien more credit sometimes. Sometimes.

The sheets were still so warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Tracklist while writing this: Teen Idle by Marina and the Diamonds, Halsey's Badlands album, Lorde, and Jack off Jill. Thanks as always for reading and feel free to come talk with me on tumblr @superhero-hoe.


End file.
